DES MOINES – Janet Petersen, chair of the Senate Oversight Committee, called on Governor Terry Branstad to take further action in the wake of firing Department of Administrative Services (DAS) Director Mike Carroll.
Petersen advised Branstad to put DAS officials on leave, secure evidence related to terminated employees who were paid off and hire an independent interim director at the DAS.
“Now that he has fired Director Mike Carroll, Director of Administrative Services, here are three steps Governor Branstad should take to regain control of his administration and the confidence of the Iowa taxpayers,” Petersen said Tuesday evening.
1) Ask the Iowa State Patrol to immediately secure the paper and electronic records relevant to these issues so they are not destroyed or modified.
2) Put Doug Woodley, DAS General Services Enterprise Chief Operating Officer, and Paul Carlson, DAS Chief Resource Maximization Officer, on unpaid administrative leave until the full extent of their involvement in these matters can be determined.
3) Hire an independent interim DAS Director whose credibility is unquestioned. His or her loyalty must be first and foremost to the people of Iowa and the effective, legal functioning of state government.
“It goes without saying that the Governor’s internal investigation, conducted by his top advisors, failed to provide Iowans with the truth,” Petersen continued.
The Iowa Senate has taken the following actions so far, passing four legislative proposals to begin to address these concerns:
- On Tuesday, the Senate amended the Infrastructure Budget to strike $22million from the Deferred Maintenance Fund under DAS’s control. DAS has refused to provide requested information and provided deceptive and untruthful testimony to the Legislature.
- Amended SF 2342, the Administration and Regulation budget bill to call for independent audit. Developed in meetings with State Auditor Mosiman (R), it requires her to review the personnel settlement agreements with terminated state employees, especially the agreements made outside of normal channels. The audit will focus on the affected positions, the payments, the source of the payments, and the person or persons show signed the agreements.
- Began amending all state budget bills to ensure that no state money is used for hush money payments.
- Passed SF 2244, legislation which defines who is and is not an at-will/confidential employee. Under the Branstad Administration, hundreds of merit employees were converted to at-will/confidential employees. That means they can be fired at any time and for any reason by Governor Branstad.
[poll random]
Hillary Clinton is leading this pole. Something very wrong with this picture when that is the best we can come up with to lead America and the free world.
Doesn’t Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failing to provide security and getting those people killed in Benghazi mean anything to you? Are you really that desperate to pick this kind of lousy leadership?
Who cares about this. It is a given and part of the deal with every job you leave that part of the severance pay is conditional on you not saying anything bad about the company you are leaving. They are making a big deal out of nothing because it is an election year. All they are really doing is wasting our money on another witch Hunt that will solve nothing.
This was not severance pay. It was a monetary settlement to settle grievances. Iowa law does not allow secret settlements. This was not given to stop bad things from being said but an attempt to prevent Iowans from learning that some laws had been broken.
Prove it.